Enhancing Functional Thinking Using the Computer for Representational Transfer

The area of functional thinking is complex and has many facets. There are several studies that describe the specific difficulties of functional thinking. They show that the main difficulties are the transfer between the various representations of functions, e.g. graph, words, table, real situation or formula, and the dynamic view of functional dependencies (process concept of a function). Interactive Geometry Software allows the visualization of the dynamic aspect of functional dependencies simultaneously in different representations and offers the opportunity to experiment with them. The author presents and discusses the potential of two interactive learning activities that focus on the dynamic aspect of functional thinking in a special way. Some preliminary results from a first adoption of the activities in class are presented. Resulting research questions and plans for further research are stated.